


Bluebird

by heldor



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Canon Compliant, Dean teaches Cas to be human, Fallen Castiel, Human Castiel, Hurt Castiel, Love, M/M, Protective Castiel, Protective Dean Winchester, Sick Castiel, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-09-02
Updated: 2013-09-02
Packaged: 2017-12-25 11:02:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/952306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heldor/pseuds/heldor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the angels fall, Dean and Sam have to find Castiel and teach him how to survive as a human. Dean conveniently forgot the one human condition Cas has never had a problem understanding was love for a certain green-eyed hunter.</p><p>"You're too trusting, you're too good- it's going to get you killed."<br/>"And being suspicious and withholding has kept you alive SO well."<br/>"that was uncalled for. You're learning!"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bluebird

**Author's Note:**

> Working to get this finished before season 9 starts and makes it all AU! haha

_~*~_

  
_Leaves are falling all around, It's time I was on my way._   
_Thanks to you, I'm much obliged for such a pleasant stay._   
_But now it's time for me to go. The autumn moon lights my way._   
_For now I smell the rain, and with it pain, and it's headed my way._   
_Sometimes I grow so tired, but I know I've got one thing I got to do..._   


~*~

 

They find Castiel a week and a half after the “meteor” shower. Sam’s wheezing breath has become an occasional cough by that point, and Dean thinks he just might end up okay, but they haven’t heard from the angel at all until a call comes through on Dean’s cell and they trace the area code.

He’s muddy and shivering, sat on a bench by the side of the road in the middle of town with people skirting around him, and as Dean skids to a halt beside him and jumps out of the car he’s amazed by the flash of pure hatred he feels for every person who crossed to the other half of the sidewalk or averted their gaze to avoid helping the dirty... human.

“Cas-” Dean drops to a crouch in front of him, catching Castiel’s gaze- his eyes are shiny and far-away. He looks lost, and somewhere along the way he’s managed to lose the beige trench coat that had seemed to be part cover and part security blanket. “Hey. You okay buddy?”

They’d dragged an angel out of the water by the church, bedraggled and hazy and at first a little angry and then almost insane from the shock to his system of what had been done to him; _taken_ from him. Dean isn’t sure what Cas is going to be like, but he hadn’t really expected this- the blank gaze, his body shivering, skinny- he looks so fragile, and he realises he’d always taken for granted that although Castiel’s vessel was physically smaller than either of them, the angel was always somehow... more. More present, more powerful, more unshakeable, than either him or Sam, his skin brighter, his eyes filled with an almost unnatural intensity. Now he looks pale under the dirt and stubble and hungry, and he’s staring down at his hands. Dean understands now why people had moved away from him; He doesn’t look like the calm, benevolent spirit Dean has always known him as. He looks like a homeless man of the wild-eyes crazy variety. He looks dangerous in the way a starving dog looks dangerous. Dean knows him, and he’s still nervous of him, though perhaps for a different reason. He looks so human, and so breakable.

                “Dean.” Castiel’s voice is different. It doesn’t have a celestial rumble behind it- it’s softer, lighter. More Jimmy, less phenomenal mastery of the universe. “I- did I call you? ...I meant to call you. I can’t-” he shakes his head, “It’s strange. My head feels so-”

                “are you hurt?”

                “Small.” He finishes his sentence like Dean hadn’t even spoken, bringing his right hand up to his head- it’s a natural gesture, and it seems strange on Castiel- his hands stay at his sides, always. He doesn’t touch his face or rub his eyes. He doesn’t fiddle with a penny in his pocket or move like his shoes are tied a little too tight or shift from foot to foot like he’s been standing too long and wants to sit down—When he’s been sitting down a long time he doesn’t shift and stretch like he wants to stand. But now he’s rubbing his forehead like his head hurts. “I feel like I’m forgetting everything-”

                “Come on, buddy,” Dean says, putting an arm around his back, motioning for Sam to help him, “man, you reek- when’d you take a shower, huh?” he’s trying to keep his voice light, poking fun, but he can feel ribs through Castiel’s shirt, “when’d you last eat, for that matter?” Castiel shakes his head.

                “I can’t remember,” he says, and Dean isn’t sure if he’s answering the question or continuing on from before, so he and Sam bundle him into the back seat of the Impala to take them back to a soulless motel room. Cas sits in the centre of the back bench, and Dean hesitates for a second before reaching over and finding the seatbelt from where it’s wedged between the seat cushions. It probably hasn’t been used since he and Sam were kids, but something in his head reminds him that Castiel isn’t unkillable anymore.

They stop for food on the way, and Dean can see Castiel practically scenting the air when he tosses it on Sam’s lap, so he takes a burger out and tells him to eat. He devours it in four huge bites, like a starving dog and Dean wonders if he’s eaten at all since what the weather channels are reporting as a freak meteor shower.

 

\--

 

He wants to be mad at Cas. In a way he still is— everything he said before is still true. He still lied, still abandoned them, still refused to trust him, still beat him bloody to the extent that the next time Dean saw him he’d felt a second of stomach-chilling terror before he shook it off. But that was someone else. That was Castiel; angel. This is Castiel; lost and in need of help, and Dean can’t ignore family, so he tells him to shower, and while he’s in there he and Sam work to find any clothes which might begin to fit him. A t-shirt of Dean’s, since Sam’s shoulders are nearly two of the guy, a plaid shirt of Sam’s that he hasn’t worn in a while because it’s too tight; just a little tear on the shoulder that hardly shows, a pair of Dean’s jeans they’ll probably have to cuff, but which shouldn’t be too bad, underpants, socks- they doubt either of them have shoes to fit him, so he’ll have to wear his own for now.

He’s in the shower for nearly thirty minutes before Dean knocks on the door to ask if he’s ok. The water’s been running the whole time, and there’s vague clanking noises that suggest the former angel is showering, but he takes a moment to reply to the question.

                “How do you know when you’re done?” he asks, and Dean takes a moment to think about it.

                “You just... have you cleaned everything?” Sam gives him an amused look, and he shrugs.

                “I believe so.”

                “Then you’re done.”

                “It feels nice.” Sam covers his mouth, and Dean can tell he’s trying not to laugh, so he shoots him a glare.

                “Yeah yeah, ok buddy. Knock it off or you’ll go blind.” There’s a moment of silence punctuated by a snort of laughter from Sam, until finally Castiel replies.

                “I wasn’t doing—“

                “Look, whatever— your business. Just get out and dry off, ok? We got some clothes you can put on for now, till we sort you something out.”

                “I’ll be there immediately.”

Dean gets the feeling Castiel is going to take some time to adjust to life without teleporting, because he’s a good ten minutes coming out of the bathroom, and when he does his hair has the heavy, slightly greasy look which tells Dean it’s still full of soap, so he takes Cas back to the bathroom and pushes him over the sink— he gasps as his shower-warm chest touches the porcelain- and Dean turns on the hot tap- checks it with his fingers- and scrubs at his scalp, rubbing his fingers through the short brown hair until suds stop washing out. Castiel is breathing slow and deep and calm when he’s done, and he’s smiling as he straightens. It’s a somewhat alien look on his face.

It occurs to Dean that all his facial expressions before had been... conscious; thought out. Once, late at night with Sam asleep in the passenger seat, Dean had pulled over to the side of the road to walk around and wake himself up a little to stop from falling asleep at the wheel, and Cas had appeared. Exchanging news of the heavenly war and potential leads had drifted into exchanging less officious words, and they’d talked a while; just chatting, taking a brief moment in the dark to enjoy not rushing to the next disaster. Dean had jokingly called him a robot for not reacting as he felt he ought to to some piece of trivia, and the angel had explained that for his kind the majority of their emotion was expressed differently than humans. He hadn’t said it explicitly, but Dean got the feeling it was something to do with wing movements, judging by the way Cas, Gabriel and Balthazar had always puffed up their chests and pushed back their shoulders whenever they were around each other. Or maybe it was karmic energy waves or some crap like that. He wasn’t sure, but what he was sure of was that smiles and frowns had by and large been put on for his and Sam’s benefit, like a parent making exaggerated facial gestures at a baby to make sure they got the picture. Facial expressions, to Castiel, were laughably basic.  Now, the lazy little smile on Cas’s face looks natural. Dean would have bet he didn’t even know he was doing it. He was a human in his own body, rather than a giant force inhabiting a tiny machine.

 

They give him the courtesy of looking away while he gets dressed. Sam and he sit down at the table and eat their dinner while he puzzles over putting on jeans and a t-shirt and puts his arm in the head hole, but Dean fights not to help him. He’s not Sam at age 6, he reminds himself, or Ben complaining about having to get up for school; he was a fully grown man, who had seen millennia pass. He could learn to put on his own shirt.

 

                Cas sits down to finish his own stone-cold meal, pink-cheeked but with a glow of success hanging around him, and Dean is struck all at once by how he sits. He tucks his socked feet back under his chair, crossed at the ankles with his toes curled up. He shifts around in the seat to get comfortable, scratches the back of his thumb with his index finger, licks salt off his bottom lip after finishing a French fry. Dean’s never realised how... still Cas was. He’d sit in a chair while Sam and Dean slept or cleaned their weapons without moving for an hour at a time, as though when he wasn’t actively doing anything he simply powered down, waiting for more input—listening to angel radio, usually. Now, he was a mass of tiny natural movements— all of them happening without his having to consciously order his body to do them. He sees Cas looking over at the empty bag of food, and then at Sam and Dean; no ulterior motive on his face, but Dean pushes over his own second burger at him. Sam’s face is laughable; Dean does not share food, but Dean silences him with a look before he makes any kind of dumb comment. It’s no different to when they were kids, splitting the last of a box of cheerios and Dean made sure Sam got the bigger bowl. He wasn’t starving; he’d had a good breakfast, lunch on the road. Cas had spent days in the woods foraging for berries or some shit. Dean can deal with missing out on one crappy roadside burger that tasted of little except cold grease and salt.

When he judges that Cas has enough food in him to not be in immediately danger of toppling over, he broaches the conversation he and Sam had been planning in whispers while Cas showered. It was an alien concept to have him unable to hear them talking about him.

                “So. Cas- what happened?”

                “...hard to say, really.” He’s looking  down at his own hands as he talks, spreading them from pressed together as if in prayer to palm-up, as though he’s miming opening a book. “Metatron, he- Kevin was correct: the trials were not what we had thought- Naomi was telling the truth. The angels fell.”

                “We know that. I mean- what happened with you? I mean come on, did you see yourself? What _happened_ to you.”

                “I appeared in the woods, not far from where you found me. I watched my brothers and sisters fall. I was... disoriented. I wasn’t sure of where I was. I’ve never experienced that sensation before. Even when I was- after healing Sam, last year- it was different to that. I tried to find my way out, but I got lost in the forest. I could hear one of my brothers crying out for help where he’d fallen, but I couldn’t find him. I found another man- homeless... he looked cold. He was an elder, he shouldn’t have been in such a place alone. I- he asked for help, and I asked where I was, and he asked for my coat, so I gave it to him. But I think he wanted money. I’m not sure, he pushed me down. I didn’t want to hurt him, so I left.” Dean didn’t want to ask if Cas _could_ have hurt him anymore. “I wandered the forest for a few days, I drank from a stream, but I think the water wasn’t good; I forget, sometimes, how much filth you’ve pumped into your water system in the last millennia— then I came upon a road. I followed it to town. The people there weren’t very friendly, but someone allowed me to use their phone. And then you picked me up, and here I am.”

                Dean takes a deep breath, playing for time by screwing their trash up and putting it into the take-out bag. His head is filled with the image of Castiel, cold and dirty and starving, walking through the forest, sick from drinking dirty water; no common sense to keep himself alive, because he’s never had to actively _try_ before, his majestic heavenly grace took care of all that shit and left the dude to his benevolent thoughts of saving baby birds or whatever it was that angels spent their downtime planning.

He’s angry at himself, for not going with the angel to begin with, and avoiding this happening, but he can feel Sam’s warm, alive, presence beside himself and he can’t commit to the regret. He hasn’t felt so torn since the night Sam and Dad blew up at each other over Stanford and his brother had taken him aside and offered for him to come with him. Then, he’d stayed with dad, and he’d had to see the betrayal on Sam’s face as his brother told him he wasn’t surprised; that Dean never did like to think for himself. This time he’d chosen Sam, and he doesn’t regret the choice; not really, but it occurs to him that it’s the first time since then that’s he’s had two such opposing forces in his life. No one has ever come close to being as important to him as Sam, but the knowledge that Castiel was sleeping on the dirt under the sky elicits a reaction in him that he’s not entirely prepared for.

                “What happened between you and Crowley?” Cas is looking at Sam now, with a hint of his old shrewdness, and Dean’s brother looks uncomfortable. They’ve been avoiding the topic of everything Sam said to Dean.

                “Dean wouldn’t let me finish the last trial,” he explains, “we’ve decided to look for another way.” It doesn’t sound that sincere; he knows that it’s unlikely that there is, or ever will be, another way to eliminate the threat of demons completely in the way that closing the gates would have done.

                “One death to close the gates of Hell for all time would have been a small payment to make in the scheme of things.” His words hang heavy in the air for a moment. “But I’m glad that you didn’t do it, Sam. It’s good— that Dean didn’t let you.” Dean feels a little smile on his face, but he hides it by clearing his throat. People being nice to Sammy always fills him with an odd sort of preening pleasure, even more when it’s someone whose opinion he cares about as much as the angel’s.

                “We’ll get you some clothes of your own tomorrow,” he says, wiping his hands,  “but for now, I think you oughta get some shut eye.”

                “Of course. I can sleep here. The first time I fell asleep was a very odd sensation, but I’ve come to quite enjoy it.” Dean rubs a hand over his eyes. This guy’s going to take some getting used to.

                “You can’t sleep on a dining chair- take the bed, you’ve been freaking... sleeping in the woods for a week and a half. I can take the couch for a night, and tomorrow we’ll see about getting you a room of your own back at the Men of Letters’ secret clubhouse.”

                “I wouldn’t feel right, taking your bed.”

 

In the end, Dean forces Cas to get under the covers and he lies on top of the blanket with his boots still on. He’s just about gotten used to sleeping in his own bed in just his shorts- door locked, gun under the pillow and sleeping like the dead, but he had a good few years of sleeping perched with his arms folded across his chest, catching just enough sleep to stave off exhaustion, and it still comes easy. Sam curls up around a pillow, facing the window with the sheets around his waist. Cas sleeps like a child, on his side, with the blanket pulled up over his shoulder and clutched to his chest. When he sleeps his face is entirely unguarded, and he sleeps as deep as a kid too; deep and immovable, deaf to any sounds around him. With his angelic powers, all of his self-preservation seems to have gone as well. He’s never had to sleep before, so when he does he doesn’t keep part of his brain awake, the way Dean feels like he does;  a car starts up in the parking lot, idles for a moment; a man and a woman exchange jovial words, the doors open and close and then it drives away, and he sees Sam’s eyes flash in the faint light coming through the thin motel curtains as the high-beams pass over the shade, before he ascertains what it is and falls back to sleep just as fast. Cas doesn’t even move until somewhere around 1am, when he wakes, eyes wide, and Dean fumbles up through the haze of sleep- he’s rolled onto his side in his sleep, but Castiel’s sudden jerk brings him into wakefulness.

He just about manages to growl out “Cas? What’s wrong?” voice full of sleep, before the one-time angel drops to the floor by the bed, grabbing for the room’s trash can, and throws up his dinner. Dean drops back on to the bed with a sigh and makes eye contact with Sam across the space. They’re in over their heads.


End file.
